Soap Bubbles
by Orasa
Summary: A rather strange and...interesting fic I randomly wrote one night. Heero discovers bubbles for the first time and contemplates what they mean in relation to his life.


Title: Soap Bubbles  
  
Author: Orasa Nekuma  
  
Rating: PG?  
  
Warnings: Uhm, Heero POV...and...he's thinking about weird things...  
  
Pairings: not really...  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own the show or any of the kawaii characters from it *dammit*.  
  
Pairings: Just wait and see…  
  
Note: This was inspired by watching my roomie blow bubbles and then both of us popping them. It's just an interesting little image/thinking piece, written in about 20 minutes so I could get this idea down before it drove me crazy. Hope I didn't get too OOC, I was really trying not to...  
  
I went to a park today. I don't really know why I went, I just know I ended up sitting under this tree in the park with my laptop. I opened it and started to check for mission data when...something...floated across the screen. It was clear and spheroid, but when the sun shone through it, it was also bright and colors seemed to swirl over its surface. I reached out to touch it, to find out more, and it disappeared. That surprised me for a moment; I didn't really expect it to be so fragile. But, then again, a lot of things that are beautiful are also fragile. After a moment, I went back to my laptop, but then two more of the things floated by and that was too much for me.  
  
I closed my laptop and looked around, trying to see where they were coming from, because there were a lot of them now. I put down my laptop and stood up, reaching out to another one, this time more slowly. It still disappeared. Suddenly, I heard a child's high-pitched laughter coming from the other side of the tree. I went around the tree to see a boy and a girl holding bottles with liquid in them and blowing through little plastic rings set on the end of sticks. They would dip the ring into the bottles, and then blow, and the spheroid things would come out of the opposite end of the rings.  
  
I tried to touch another one, thinking perhaps they wouldn't be so fragile near the source, but the same thing happened as before. Then the children noticed me. "Do you like bubbles?" the girl asked. So...these are called bubbles.  
  
"What...are they?" I asked, a bit unsure.  
  
The boy laughed, but not in a mean way. "They're bubbles, silly...soap bubbles!" he said. "Haven't you ever seen bubbles before?"  
  
"No," I said quietly. I reached out to touch one and asked, "Why do they disappear when I try to touch them?"  
  
The boy blinked. "Oh! You mean why do they pop? They're just soap bubbles. You can't touch them without popping them!"  
  
"Yeah, see?" the girl said and whirled in a circle, popping all the bubbles around her even as she created more with her stick.  
  
"Oh," I said. "How do you make them?" I wasn't sure why I was having this conversation, but I was, and I wanted to know more about these things of beauty that I could not touch.  
  
The boy handed me his stick and his bottle. "Dip the wand in and then blow on the round part," he told me. So I dipped in the ring and pulled it out, noticing that there was a thin, shimmering film over it now. I blew on it and the film disappeared, but nothing else happened. No bubbles appeared. The boy laughed again and told me, "You blew too hard. Try it again." I dipped the ring in again and this time I just breathed on it gently and was rewarded with a stream of small bubbles.  
  
The two children clapped for me and quickly popped my bubbles. I handed the boy his bottle and wand back. "Why...do you pop them?" I asked. After all, they were the creators of these bubbles...why should they want to destroy their creation?  
  
They both laughed again and the girl said, "You pop them because you're supposed to! That's the whole reason for blowing them in the first place, ya know?"  
  
"Ah," I said, although I didn't really understand. I went and got my laptop and went to another tree...but now I couldn't concentrate on anything. They created those bubbles just for their own amusement, just to destroy them once again...like they had never been there at all. Was that why J had created me? Was I just his toy, something to watch while it performed and glowed in the sunlight and then laugh when it was destroyed? Was I created for the sole purpose of doing what he wanted of me and then dying when it was all over? I didn't know and it bothered me. It should not have, nothing should bother me.  
  
But this did, so I decided to ask someone about it. It would need to be one of the other pilots, only they would understand why I was wondering about these things. I knew they wondered about why we were created as well, although I had never talked to them about it before. I decided to ask Duo, mainly because he was the only one not on a mission now besides me. He was also the closest thing to a friend I'd ever had. None of the others really tried to talk to me except Quatre, and he didn't for very long. I think the two of us were just too different for him to truly understand me. And I also needed an answer soon, before I had to go into battle and I was distracted by these thoughts.  
  
When I first asked him, Duo was quite confused. I think I surprised him. He wanted to know why I was asking him this. I said, "Don't you ever wonder about us?"  
  
He said, "Well, yea...but...soap bubbles, Heero? That's deep, man!"  
  
I finally got him to answer my question. What he told me was, "Heero, I don't know if we were created to be someone's toy. But I do know we aren't soap bubbles. Bubbles don't have a mind, they're just pretty and mindless and fun to play with. We aren't mindless, especially not you. Bubbles can't change their fate, it's in their makeup to dance around and then pop when someone touches them...and never have a care in the world about their existence. But humans, like you and me, we think about stuff like this...we reason it out til it makes sense, til we know something. And we can change our fate if we want. Hell, look at how we all ran off when we found out what Operation Meteor was _really_ supposed to be! So, I guess my answer would be...Heero, you're not a soap bubble. None of us are. We're just people, tryin ta do the best we can. Ya happy now?"  
  
Strangely enough, I was. I knew that even if I had been created to be a toy, to be destroyed, I knew that I didn't have to accept that fate. I didn't have to follow the life my creator laid out for me. "Thank you, Duo," I said and walked away. I think I surprised him again. 


End file.
